NEWS Page 1/2 Good Weather, New Incentives Seen

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Good weather, new incentives seen boosting N. Korea harvest

14.10.2016 - North Korea could be looking at a bet- But there are also signs that incentives for farmers ter harvest than last year despite severe flooding introduced by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are in the country's northeast, thanks to generally good increasing production. weather and ongoing changes in official policy that allow farmers to keep - and profit from - more of what In his first public speech after assuming power up- they produce. on the death of his father in late 2011, Kim vowed in April 2012 that the North Korean people shouldn't While formal data is not out yet, the main harvest have to tighten their belts again. That same year, of 2016, which is currently underway, appears to be outsiders started to detect changes in the North's shaping up to be slightly better than last year, ac- agricultural policy, including allowing farmers to cording to the World Food Program. keep more of their crops, if they could produce more, instead of having to hand over all their harvest to the The WFP, which has an office in Pyongyang, at- state. tributed the positive outlook to good weather, but noted North Korea will still need to top up locally pro- North Korea calls it the "field responsibility system" duced food with imports and added that the flood- and officially credits the idea to its founding leader, ing in the northeast caused by Typhoon Lionrock in Kim Il Sung. late August and early September could have a significant impact on food supply in the affected areas. In effect, it's an effort by the government to create an incentive for production while maintaining overall North Korea has made significant strides in agricul- state management. The policy is believed to have ture since the disastrous famine years of the 1990s been cemented when Kim wrote a long letter to a - caused by floods, drought, the collapse of Sovi- meeting of farm workers in 2014 to promote the idea. et bloc benefactors and the North's own policy mis- steps. But the mountainous and isolated socialist Ri Won Jae, the chief engineer at the Samjigang Co- country has yet to achieve its official goal of food operative Farm, said it has indeed inspired farmers self-sufficiency. Malnourishment caused by the lack to produce more. of balanced diets is widespread, and the United Na- "I think the main thing for success is that the incen- tions continues a long-term program of assistance tive to produce, and the farmer's sense of respon- to the most vulnerable segments of the population. sibility, have increased, because we introduced the

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field responsibility system," he said in a recent interview with Associated Television News.

O Jong Hyok, the head of a sub-work team on the cooperative in South Hwanghae province, said the new policies have spurred competition. The sub- units themselves - generally from five to 10 people - are something of an innovation along the same lines. The smaller groupings increase each worker's feel- ing of having a stake in the yield.

"This is a field that our sub-work team is in charge of," O said in an interview with APTN at the farm. "After finishing cutting the rice, we are carrying the rice sheaves and threshing now. Since we started the field responsibility system, the farmers have become more competitive and the harvest yield has increased. The more we grow, the more the farmers get, and then we will become wealthier."

Even so, Colin Kampschoer, the WFP's represen- tative in Pyongyang, stressed that the food losses caused by the flooding in the northeast come at a critical time, just before the start of the North's ex- tremely cold winter.

"The floods that hit the north of the DPRK in early September have reportedly damaged 27,411 hectares of arable land," he said, using the acronym for the North's official name, the Democrat- ic People's Republic of Korea. "Greenhouses were washed away and people have lost their food stocks, kitchen gardens and livestock, which are all impor- tant sources for vegetables, fats and protein to make families' diets more diverse." (dpa)

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